The invention relates to an arrangement for pickling bundles of wires, sheets or plates with a U-shaped pickling hook having one leg secured to a suspension means and the other leg designed as a support for the bundles.
Arrangements of this kind are known, e.g., from Austrian Pat. No. 290,245 (corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 3,592,690 and British Pat. No. 1,243,639, respectively). Advantageously, they are resiliently suspended and allowed to oscillate with the help of oscillation generators. With these arrangements pickling liquid gets in between the coils of the bundles and very uniform pickling results are obtained.
One difficulty with these prior arrangements, however, is that after the pickling hook carrying the bundle has been lifted out of the treatment bath, pickling liquid or condensation liquid drips from the leg that had been immersed or from the connecting means between the suspension means and the pickling hook, onto the material being treated, whereby the surface of the latter is negatively affected. Colour changes occur on the material being treated, and starting points for increased aggression by corrosion may be created. When very sensitive or delicate materials are pickled or treated otherwise, the only known way to prevent drops from getting on the material treated is to wipe the leg and the other parts arranged above the bundle with a cloth after the final immersion. Of course, this solution is very complicated and unsatisfactory, and therefore it would be desirable to overcome the present difficulties by finding an improved shape for the pickling hook.